Ocmulgee Brewpub’s Landis is a downtown ‘beer guy’

The road to Macon was not a straight path for Nick Landis.

It followed a longitudinal arch from Flagstaff, Arizona, where he went to college, to his hometown of Utqiagvik, Alaska, which is the northernmost city in the U.S. and about as far north as you can go without floating off on an iceberg into the Arctic Ocean.

He was working at a bar in Denver, Colorado, when he was introduced to Laurie Fickling the day after Thanksgiving in 2018. She was a landscape architect and, while her last name might not have been familiar in the Mile High City, it was a household name back home in Macon, Georgia.

Her grandmother, the late Neva Langley Fickling, was Miss America in 1953. Her great-grandfather, the late William Fickling Sr., gave away more than 120,000 Yoshino cherry trees in his lifetime and helped turn Macon into the cherry blossom capital of the world. The family name sits atop the 15-story Fickling Building, the tallest in the city.

Landis fell in love with Laurie Fickling. And then he fell in love with Macon.

Landis and Laurie both had careers that were heavily impacted by COVID-19, so they moved to Macon in September 2020. His life took yet another turn six weeks later when he walked into Fall Line Brewing Co. on Plum Street.

“I went in to buy a six-pack and essentially walked out with a job,’’ he said.

He became the production manager at Fall Line and trained the staff. He left 13 months ago and landed two blocks away at Ocmulgee Brewpub, which was Middle Georgia’s first brewpub when it opened in 2016.

At OBP, Landis is known as the “Beer Guy.’’ It is his official job title. It is printed on his business card.

Give him 20 seconds, and he will pour you a beer from one of Ocmulgee’s dozen taps.

Give him 20 minutes and he will tell you — in his deep baritone voice — about the artistry and craftsmanship of brewing, the history of ale, the traditions of lager and the science of fermentation.

He not only hydrates — he educates.

“One of the benefits of my job is the amount of time I get to talk to people and to my employees,’’ he said. “Even if they don’t recognize the names on the board, I can go through and help them find something.

“I love both ends of the spectrum. I can introduce somebody who doesn’t have any comfort level or familiarity with it to something new that they might really like and enjoy. And I can have people who have a knowledge of beer. I can have a different level of discussion with either. One side is more the teaching, and the other is more the learning.’’

Landis has a background in biochemistry, but he could also qualify as a professor of barley — with a doctorate in hops and yeast.

 “A big portion of my job is beer education for people,’’ he said. “Last week, I did a beer tasting class for interested folks. It’s culturally common for us to do a food and wine pairing, but beer can have a lot of the same advantages.’’

On any given day, there are 2,000 gallons of beer ready to flow at Ocmulgee. In the mornings, Landis mixes the raw ingredients then combines them in a sanitized tank with the yeast. The fermentation can take anywhere from 10 days to eight weeks.

Of the 12 taps at OPB, as many as six are mainstays on the menu. Those are the most popular with customers. The others are experimental and seasonal.  

He is passionate about coming up with creative names for the craft beers and keeps a list of more than 100 ideas and suggestions on his phone. He sees his role as continuing to “make better beer and help our reputation not only as a brewery but as a restaurant.’’

For Macon Restaurant Week Sept. 12-20, Ocmulgee served food specials with everything from shrimp street corn tacos to “skinny dipper” eggrolls to extreme truffle fries to a $50 “Beast Feast” — that’s loaded barbecue pork fries, a Smash Squatch burger, six chicken wings and five chicken tenders.

“It’s a gigantic plate of everything,’’ he said with a laugh. “If you come in and finish it within an hour, you get your picture on the wall.’”

With a growing number of breweries, Landis said Macon “has the trajectory of being somewhere like Asheville (North Carolina),” which boasts more than 100 local beers and has more breweries per capita than any city in the U.S.

He has become an ambassador for Macon, and his parents recently moved here to be close to their two young grandchildren.

“Macon is a big place, but it feels smaller,’’ he said. “There is a level of positivity, too. I’ve traveled a lot in my life, and I’ve always lived in fairly good places. But there’s a difference when you can walk into a space and know there is a community of people who are devoted to making it better.’’